


Christmas songs, really?

by singasongofdestiel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Charlie Ships It, Christmas Decorations, Christmas Fluff, Christmas Tree, Dean Winchester Has a Crush on Castiel, M/M, Snowball Fight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-26
Updated: 2016-07-26
Packaged: 2018-07-26 22:53:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 14,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7593520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singasongofdestiel/pseuds/singasongofdestiel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean Winchester only went and fell for the biggest Scrooge living in his apartment block. Not that he would ever act on it, of course. Except for the fact that Charlie has other plans.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Whistling; mild time travel; gingers dispensing comfort and ice cream

In a battle against the soul-drenching sleet, Dean Winchester sloped home. He turned up his coat collar in attempt to protect himself, but it made very little difference. It was freezing and, what was worse, the stubborn spattering on his glasses made him an easy target for each shivering bus and reckless taxi. Yet despite the dismal weather, his lips twisted along a smile— he had Christmas music in his head and the compulsory spring in his step that came with it.

His mood diminished a little when he recalled the reactions of the teenagers in his choir to the Christmas songs. Dean knew that it was only just November, but if they were going to be ready for the school concert then they had to start preparing now. Really, with their low attendance and lack of enthusiasm (read: that unfortunate teenage awkwardness which prohibits showing too much enthusiasm for anything), practice should have started last month. Admittedly, that delay was more due to his lack of organisation in procuring sheet music fitting the SSAA-with-slight-TB collection of willing choral singers, than to any sympathy for their limited tolerance levels.

Still, he was full enough of slightly unseasonal spirit to express it in whistle-form when he finally reached the sphere of central heating provided by his building’s lobby. The regulated climate shoved condensation onto the lenses of his glasses and forced him to a standstill in order to avoid walking into the furniture. Some unknown force constantly renegotiated the landscape of coffee tables and casual armchairs laid around to give the place a “homely” feel that was somehow always slightly off mark. Dean attempted to clean his lenses, but his work shirt wasn’t quite the correct softness so the yellow-lit room just became increasingly smeary. He gave up and moved through the fuzz to check his mail, still whistling.

“Christmas songs, really?”

Dean jumped at the realisation that he wasn’t alone, and that he was, in fact, in the presence of a capital-H Humbug. Dean couldn’t see them to confront them, so he resumed whistling with cavalier obnoxiousness while he waited for the speaker to reach the bottom of the stairs.

“Don’t you think it’s a little early?”

The gruffness of the grumbling was waylaid by the lazy twinkle in the newcomer’s eyes. Dean’s mouth dried out and he had to stop the tune so that he could digest the fact that a lazy twinkle could even exist, and also that it could be so attractive. It wasn’t until a significant pause had passed that Dean gathered his composure enough to continue the conversation.

“Not a big one for Christmas cheer then, Cas?”

Castiel Novak turned from his own mail to look at Dean. Dean didn’t appreciate this; he was really trying to attempt a normal conversation, and blue eyes and strong jaw lines and softly dry lips were not conducive to that process.

“‘Cheer’ would not be the word that comes to mind, no.”

And with that, Dean silently watched his heart climb the stairs. Now he was stuck in the awkward position of having to time his own ascension so he wouldn’t catch up. This interminable space was made necessary by the fact that Cas lived right below Dean’s top floor flat, which had the potential to make a long and uncomfortable walk. Why did he have to fall for such a Scrooge?

After a brief period of empty time, Dean set off up the stairs. He took them two at a time and almost managed to convince himself that this had nothing to do with the man just ahead of him. His breath warmed his cheeks as he gained speed, sapping at the winter’s-edge redness that the outside’s chill had granted him. Dean stumbled as he rounded a corner slightly too fast.

This would have been alright, if he hadn’t then put his hand out for stability and so created an instant of unignorable percussion when it struck the wall. As he righted himself, he heard light steps coming towards him and once again saw Cas above him.

“Are you alright Dean?”

“Yeah fine, you know how the cold air can get you!”

He laughed in forced casual style, leaning his elbow against the offending wall in a painful approximation of an early 90s boy band poster. Once he returned to the correct century, Dean realised that Castiel was now only a few steps above him. A string of curse words came to mind— they were going to be awkwardly close the rest of the way up. Actually catching up and conversing was out of the question, of course— Dean had had his fill of miserable failure for one day.

After the strictly moderated, harshly berated trudge to his floor, Dean chose not to go into his own apartment. He opened the door next to his and flopped onto his neighbour’s couch instead.

 

* * *

 

“Jeez Dean, it’s not like closed doors are there for privacy or anything!”

When Dean didn’t lift his head to retort (even though he had a perfect comeback about firewalls being there for the same reason), his best friend returned with cheesecake ice cream and two spoons.

“What happened with loverboy this time?”

Dean retrieved his consciousness from the unspecific smell of the cushions but still had to take a spoon of sugary goodness before he felt able to answer. This delay was too much for the impatient red head, who promptly deposited herself on the small of his back, and almost expelled the ice cream that Dean had yet to swallow in the process.

“Tell Auntie Charlie all about it.”

Dean sighed, with as much depth and despair as was possible with a 5’5” computer-genius-stroke-hacker on his back.

“That bad, huh?”

Another sigh, and a look which would break a heart more effectively than the droopy, deep brown eyes of an adoring bloodhound. This was the wrong move— it made Charlie irate enough to employ her fists. The irregular punches rattled Dean’s ribcage to the extent that he couldn’t have replied even if it was his entire reason for being.

He followed the only course of action left to him, and pushed Charlie off his back and onto the floor.

As she spluttered in outrage, he scooped up the ice cream and retreated to his own flat. He knew he only had about 2 minutes before her fists would be applied to his door, but that gave him enough time to compose his thoughts and hide the sugar.

1 minute and 49 seconds later, he told her everything and she found the ice cream in the false bottom of his dresser drawer.


	2. A nemesis made-in-China; Taylor Swift; the Christmas kind of magic.

Crushing someone causes certain death or disfigurement; crushing _on_ someone can lead to pretty much the same results (just in more metaphorical terms). Unfortunately, Lionel Richie was right, and these things tend to get stuck on you. At least there were hundreds of songs on the topic to choose from, so Dean was able to create a beautifully crooning playlist smothered in deep-fried cheese to help him get through it.

Whitesnake was asking him through his headphones if this was love while he carried the fourth and final box inside. He knew it wasn’t, not really— he didn’t know the guy well enough— but it had the potential to be, if certain factors and events coincided. Ah well. He had higher things to think of.

Dean faced his gigantic task, a burden that only he could bear. It was his task and his alone to make the shifting glacial landscape of the lobby into a winter wonderland that Bing Crosby himself would be proud of.  He was the only one who could do it, namely because he was the only one who _wanted_ to do it, rather than being the only incorruptible doer of the deed as a certain hobbit had been. Most of the inhabitants of his building kept to themselves, and Charlie thought it was pointless to expend so much energy on something that would have to be taken down in a month. The only help Dean could expect to receive was when his brother had carried the tree— taller even than Sam’s lanky 6’4½”— into the lobby that morning.

So now Dean was alone and absorbed in his task, and absolutely not thinking about the person he thought about far too much but had no right to think about at all. He warmed to the job, scattering beglittered pinecones and glass angels and wooden nativity scenes held within a nutshell with merry abandon. The tree was already wrapped in three different colours of lights that caught his image in each bulb, reflecting a shining and haze-warmed version of his face as he worked.

Dean dusted a bauble with his sleeve (he was wearing a shapeless Christmas jumper in far too many colours, naturally). He contemplated where this wholly ugly and terrible article should go— it had originally been covered in pink and green glitter, but was now shedding over his hands like a cat dredged from the bottom of a pond— should go. He opted for pride of place, caught between the three shades of light and where no one passing through the lobby could avoid seeing it. It was also slightly too high up for any of them to remove it. Dean learnt from history, and ensured it was out of the reach of anyone who decided to “accidentally” smash it (he knew a certain Crowley had been blame for that, but Dean didn’t have conclusive evidence).

He stomped up the step ladder in time with Taylor Swift’s good old _You Belong with Me_ , and even let a few snatches of the chorus escape his mouth. As he hung the gloriously hideous thing on the chosen branch Dean realised that someone was trying to catch his attention.

He turned sharply, his hand instinctively gripping the nearest branch. If he had stuck with the ballet classes that Sam had enrolled him in as a joke when he was 10 then Dean might have had the grace and balance to prevent what was going to happen. Unfortunately, his ungainly teenage years and the accompanying self-consciousness had relegated his ballet shoes to the dustbin, leaving him with no choice but to crash to a heap on the ground when the stepladder overbalanced.

Dean landed with metal steps digging into his ribs and pine needles clutched in his hands.

_She wears short skirts, I wear t-shirts._

He winced and stood up. He tried to walk towards the reason for his downfall, but had to give up after a few steps. The wool of his jumper had snarled itself in the hinges of that goddamn stepladder, and it was clattering after him like a large puppy (if puppies were made of metal and had never developed ball and socket joints).

_She’s cheer captain and I’m on the bleachers._

He ripped his headphones out of his ears with a silent ‘ _sorry Taylor’_ — this just wasn’t the time. The jumper was thoroughly stuck. The promise of comfort and slight itchiness that had made it his choice for the decorating session had betrayed him. His finger got caught in one of the many sliding clamps, or maybe one of the myriad clamping slides, of the infernal contraption. Dean swore loudly and justifiably. As he did the manly thing and sucked his injury, another pair of hands reached into the jaws of death.

Or rather, another pair of hands calmly followed the offending strand of wool to where it was snagged and proceeded to carefully unwind it. Dean was freed. This was unfortunate, because it meant he also became free to recognise his saviour.

That stepladder was going in the skip as soon as the tree was finished. Of course the person who had witnessed the tumble, who was now looking at him wearing a jumper chosen specifically for its garish ugliness, was the same person who had caused him to listen to sappy songs for the past week.

Dean felt crushing would have been a better fate. As it was, he had fallen. Fallen onto his stomach, winded and disorientated and lost for words and caught on the very object that should have supported him, only to be saved by the person who had made him fall, the person _he had fallen for_. If there was a Goddess of Irony out there in the celestial cosmos, she had outdone herself with this one.

There was a sharp tug on the base of his jumper. Dean stumbled forward, unsure what this could possibly mean. Was it a secret sign of a matching longing? Or a code for close your mouth you look like a fool? Two elegant fingers held up the traitorous strand of wool in front of Dean’s eyes. _Oh_.

He swallowed, and held his hand out for the wool. Why he did that, he had no idea— he didn’t want it, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself taking it. He cleared his throat.

“Thanks Cas.”

His cheeks were blazing; Dean cursed the cruel twist of genetics that meant he turned bright red at the slightest provocation. He would have wished for the floor to swallow him up if he didn’t think the malevolent step ladder would somehow make even that more embarrassing for him. Perhaps it would snag him, force him to dangle over the bottomless abyss and wait to be saved again.

When he was able to lift his eyes to the man in front of him, he realised that he wasn’t being mocked or laughed at (which, in full honesty, would have been his first course of action if their roles had been reversed). Instead, Castiel was staring at the tree.

A more correct verb would be scrutinising: every aspect of its Christmas-laden branches was dissected by Cas’s gaze. His analysis finished at the spectacular pink and green monstrosity that was emitting an uneven shower of sparkles as it reeled in Dean’s wake. Cas tilted his head to the side, and his nose scrunched in a suppressed expression of distaste that would have been missed by anyone whose eyes weren’t in constant orbit of his face. Dean noticed though. What’s more, Castiel noticed that he noticed.

He turned with a small shrug that was made even smaller by the ill-fitting trench coat he favoured above any sensible fashion choices.

“You’re not doing it right.”

“ _Right?_ There’s no _right_ about it.” Dean knew his voice was a whine, but he couldn’t help the defensive tightness in his chest.

“Plus, you wouldn’t exactly have any helpful input Mr. Scrooge, Mr. “Cheer doesn’t come to mind”.”

_Nice going, Dean._ He chastised himself— there were so many better ways to treat your crush than to act like a child and insult him.

In response Castiel started walking away. Dean knew it was entirely his fault and fair enough, so he was somewhat confused when Cas stopped at the nearest of the diffused couches to shuck his coat onto it. He was equally dumbfounded when Castiel rolled his sleeves up and turned back to him.

“If you would allow me, I’ll show you what I mean.”

Dean nodded, terrified and strangely aroused. He had no idea what was going on, but he knew he would accept whatever Castiel asked of him. But Cas wasn’t interested in him— his attention had returned to the tree.

He began lifting baubles off, reverently wrapping his fingers around each one and plucking them like they were the ripest fruit to ever grace the Garden of Eden. Once he had removed about half of Dean’s morning’s work, he began to redistribute it. The tree responded to his attentiveness— when Cas had to reach a branch it bent fractionally towards him, welcoming his offerings. There was no chance of this man falling on his arse in a decorating related disaster. Dean knew that he had no chance if even trees fell in love with Castiel.

Once Cas finished his ministrations, he stepped back and lightly dusted the pine needles from his fingertips. This time his shrug managed to encompass his work and offer it tentatively across the lobby. It was a surprisingly unsure request for Dean’s opinion.

Dean stepped towards the tree, taking in the new arrangement. There was a choir of glistening angels above a region dense with little gold lights, a glimpse of heaven’s shimmered hallelujahs. There was a gentle gradient of bulky trains and boots and snow globes at the base of the tree that steadily lapsed to the ephemeral and shining that graced the upper branches. In amongst that the homemade pine cones braced themselves against the intricacies of a miniature Nativity, their opposing attractiveness emphasised by the contrast. Dean’s eyes caught on the monstrosity, still hanging abjectly where he had left it and foregrounded all the more in its refusal to bend to the decorative wizardry affecting the rest of the tree.

He smiled. Cas was brilliant. Dean told him so, took a step towards the man and stopped. He spread his arms wide in the only way he could express the cataclysmic opening he felt in his stomach. He felt as if light was going to burst from between his ribs. He was so happy and, for want of a better expression to capture the slender edge of feeling on which he was balanced, so in love.

“You’re a genius. A downright, honest-to-God, Christmas-saving genius.”

A flicker of a smile taunted Dean from Castiel’s mouth, but it was quickly quenched to play the next line.

“I don’t think Christmas was in great need of saving, Dean.”

Cas approved of his reaction, then. Dean tugged his jumper over his head (he had quite lost the taste for it, somehow) and brought over the next box.

Castiel silently took it, and they set to work. They moved around each other in a tacit dance: Dean would place baubles where impulse led him, and Cas would create art around them. Only occasionally would Cas ask if he could move one of Dean’s placements, and so only occasionally did Dean have to concede that he was less talented in the Christmas department than the Humbug.

The final result was gorgeous, a true monument to the most wonderful time of the year. Dean grinned at Cas and received a begrudging smile in return. They were unified by pride for a glistening moment that was briefly held in suspension by the glazed eyes of the fairy lights.

Then Cas gathered his coat over his arm, and quietly made his way upstairs.

Dean sighed and waited the acceptable length of time before he could mount the stairs himself.


	3. Goodbye world; greasy meat patties; the problematic qualities of dreams

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This one has a power cut and s e x u a l t e n s i o n.

Dean was so frustrated. He would have hit his head against the wall if it wouldn’t have caused Charlie to come round and ask questions. None of his musical ensembles were ready for the Christmas concert that was only one week away, he hadn’t had a chance to find the perfect presents for everyone yet because it was Coursework marking time, and he hadn’t seen Castiel for a fortnight.

The thought of Cas brought a whole different kind of frustration with it. All of his sweetest fantasies made Dean feel guilty now, the afternoon of interaction lending the quality of real-personness to a previously wholly unreachable dream. Thinking of celebrities and (okay, okay) cheap porn had also paled in comparison to the thought that Castiel was a real person and maybe…

Dean knew that that way madness lay, so he forced himself into activity. He was pacing around his kitchen, debating if he should eat now or mark another clump of Year 11 work, when the lights flickered. He paused and prayed to the God of Teachers Under Pressure that he wouldn’t have to finish his marking by candlelight.

Either this God wasn’t listening, or had decided that teachers were big enough and ugly enough to fend for themselves, because the lights flickered once, twice more and then went out. They gave up with a crackling sigh that left a purple smear behind Dean’s eyelids as he stood in the pitch black and wondered what to do.

When his brain suggested nothing else, he wandered to the window to search the sky for inspiration. On his arrival, he found the sky had disappeared. It had been swallowed, gobbled up by the huge white maw of a snowstorm.

Dean pressed his hand to the glass in awe, wondered at the gasp of condensation conjured up by his fingertips. He opened every set of curtains to let the glow of half-frozen precipitation explain his once-familiar apartment in uncertain ways. The light’s forced introversion implied blue-dripped shadows and cast crystalline secrets where before had been stacks of paper and functional furniture.

He had never been so grateful for atmospheric water vapour.

 

* * *

 

When Dean woke up the next day, his duvet-swaddled form was captured in bright white light. The snowscape glared at him from the uncovered windows, reflecting the light in an insistent plea to _get up, get up now_.

Dean duly rolled out of the warm embrace of his sheets, and only briefly contemplated retreat when his feet met the cold tiles of the kitchen. He waited for the kettle to boil with the fixed concentration of early morning.

Once his coffee was ready, he took the too-hot sip that scalded his tongue every day and was drawn back to the glorious blankness that had been made of the outside world.

On closer inspection, it became clear that it wasn’t true blankness— the outlines of shapes still remained, as if someone had drawn the streets in charcoal and not quite managed to rub them out. He took in the flat white roads, unmarked even by the unstoppable march of the postman, and hurried to check his emails.

Sure enough, his school was closed. He dressed and hurtled down the stairs, eager to make the first footprint on that perfect landscape. Underneath it all, he was still the child who carefully constructed Lego towers just to be the cause of their destruction.

Unfortunately, his plan was scuppered the instant he reached the (usually) automatic doors. When they stubbornly refused to open under his full weight, Dean had to face the fact that he could not leave the building until someone else had cleared the snow away. And what would be the point of that?

He slumped up the stairs, and was met on the way by a Charlie with a similar idea to his. Once he informed her of the issue, they sullenly trudged in tandem back to the top floor.

After a couple of hours of pacing, reading yesterday’s newspapers, and even one attempted game of Scrabble that dissolved when they ended up trying to outdo each other’s vulgarities, there was nothing to do but flop.

“The worst part is I don’t get to use my day off for gaming or binge-watching— you know, fun-stuff— because the crappy generator has decided it hates me.”

“Yes, the whole building has lost power because the inanimate object incapable of feeling has an unfounded grudge against you.”

Dean was getting more than a little fed up with the world in general but because most of the world wasn’t here, he had to take it out on Charlie.

“Whatever. Maybe it doesn’t like the fact that someone in this place likes to multi-task.”

“Most people don’t call playing games on three different platforms at once multi-tasking— they call it pointless.”

“Just because I function at a higher level than mere mortals.”

Charlie stuck out her tongue and Dean sighed deeply. He couldn’t even wind her up successfully; this day was not going how he’d planned.

“I’m surprised you’re here with me, actually. I thought you would’ve clocked that everyone is stuck inside this building today.”

“I’m aware of that Charlie— that’s why I’m here listening to you.”

“That’s how I know you haven’t really realised it.” She was gloating, and Dean mildly considered slapping her smirk away. However, he couldn’t quite gather the energy for it, so he let her continue

“Because there is someone who is probably bored out of his skull and waiting for a diverting amusement just below us.”

_Oh._

“Do with that information what you will— my DS should still have some charge so I’m out, bitch.”

She disappeared through the door and left Dean vaguely wondering how long she had been waiting to say that. Knowing Charlie, she probably worked it out as soon as she met him on the stairs and had brought on his ennui for her own nefarious purposes.

 

* * *

 

 

Dean’s tongue was dry. It bristled against his teeth in a way that tempted him to check it for hairs with his fingers, but he suppressed the urge. It wouldn’t do for Castiel to open his door to that. His stomach rumbled— he hadn’t eaten since breakfast and in the time it had taken to gear himself up for this darkness had crept up outside the windows.

He was instructing his digestive system to shut up and deal with it, when Cas answered the door. His stomach did shut up then, but only because it fell right out and flopped around unappealing on the floor. They both stared at it, and an awkward pause ensued. At least talking to your digestive system wasn’t as bad as searching for hair on your tongue.

Dean blushed (he really would have to have stern words with his parents about that), gathered up his flailing organ, and realised that he had been standing silently for just that bit too long.

“Sorry, I was just wondering, what with the power cut and all, I thought you might be alone and maybe would want diverting…”

He sounded like a poorly trained strippogram. Dean desperately ran his hand through his hair to try to shove some sense into his brain. It was the best he could do— short of actually hitting himself— but as he had already given Cas enough evidence of his insanity, his hairless tongue was forced to try again.

“What I mean is… would you like to come to mine for dinner or hot chocolate or something?”

Less hired ‘diversion’ now, but still too eager, too much like he was asking for a date— which he definitely wasn’t, because if that had been his intention he would never have had the courage to leave his apartment.

“Just an idea.”

Dean shrugged and stared at his feet. At least they had done their job and he hadn’t actually fallen on his face this time. He noted that his laces would need replacing soon; the shorter end on his left shoe had lost its plastic sheath and was starting to fray. Dean was so focused on his shoes that Castiel’s response almost went unnoticed.

For once Dean was grateful for being so sharply attuned to the low grumbles of Cas’s voice, as it enabled him to understand that he wasn’t being rejected or scorned, but was in fact being politely accepted. All he had to do was wait for Castiel to put on his shoes, and then they would make the brief journey upstairs together.

Dean presented the contents of his life to Cas with relative calmness. The faded snow glare had left the room in the charge of glowering shadows that acted as the perfect wingmen and excuse for Dean to dig out every candle he owned.

Sam would have teased him for his range of scented candles ( _everyone should relax sometimes, Sammy_ ) but Cas simply breathed in the combination of odours.

That was when Dean absorbed the fact that Castiel was stood in his flat, close enough that he was inhaling Dean’s waste CO2 along with the mishmash of lavender and pine and whatever the hell was in the Star Trek themed candle Charlie had bought him at Comic-Con.  

Dean stepped back hurriedly, and moved to busy himself in the kitchen.

“So is it dinner or hot chocolate you were wanting Cas?”

The voice followed him into the room, “I think your stomach was quite clear on which one it wants Dean, so I’m afraid I will have to defer my part in the decision making.”

Dean’s treacherous organ protested once more, so he swallowed the assurances that it was really Castiel’s choice and rapidly scanned his memory for recipes that were impressive but platonic.

After checking whether Castiel had any dietary requirements, and promising that he didn’t even know where one would acquire cuttlefish and so had absolutely no intention of serving it to Cas ever, Dean opted to play to his strengths.

He gathered mince, onions, garlic, and a relatively mild chilli pepper from the fridge. Dean worked the meat in his hands, relaxing as the muscle memory of a hundred such actions brought him back to himself. As Castiel seemed content to simply watch Dean in his element, he was relieved of the need to make small talk. With anyone else Dean would have felt extremely awkward, but right now his little performance was just repayment for Cas’s wondrous display with the Christmas tree.

He placed the burgers in the pan to fry and flicked his radio on. Dean couldn’t help but laugh when Michael Bublé filled the room with his mulled smotherings of Christmas songs, and even Cas smiled lightly to himself. Dean had to recategorise Castiel from Grinch to Reluctant Merrymaker when he noticed him slightly swaying in time to the king of commercialised tradition.

The tang of onions on the point of burning forced Dean’s attention back to his little masterpieces. He deftly served them with a side salad of seasonal green and red, and plenty of fries. He carried them out to the table, closely tailed by Cas.

After removing the obstruction presented by the tower of coursework, they settled in for a synchronous appreciation of Dean’s talent.

“This is wonderful, thank you Dean.”

Dean was a sucker for compliments, and this went straight to his already bursting heart. He rushed into further conversation to prevent him confessing his adoration outright.

“So what is it you do?” That was a safe topic surely, small talk within the boundaries of interesting conversation.

“I’m an astronomist.”

“Oh wow, so you get paid to look at the stars?”

What Dean would have given for a more intelligent response than that, but he was really and truly caught off guard. Honestly, he had expected Castiel to be an accountant or a businessman.

“It’s mostly calculations, but yes, sometimes I do get to look at the stars.”

Dean blushed again— _how come Sam’s cheeks never coloured_ — it simply wasn’t fair. But Castiel hadn’t intended to be cutting, so was oblivious as he continued.

“I take it from the papers here that you’re a teacher?”

Dean wished he hadn’t just taken a massive bite and wished he wasn’t now forced to choke burger down with more haste than was truly polite.

“Yeah, I teach music.”

“Ah, hence the whistling. And the singing.” Castiel nodded, as if some secret had been revealed to him. The way Dean was going, he wouldn’t have been surprised if it had been.

“So what instruments do you play?”

“I play piano, mainly because I have to, also guitar. Bit of violin.”

“What extent of experience does ‘bit of’ cover?”

“I’ve never taken any exams in it, but I can play anything I choose to with enough practice.”

The conversation had become heavily Dean-centric, and he wondered if that was a bad thing. He knew that information should be exchanged both ways— that was how these things usually worked. But this was a special thing, a different thing. It wasn’t as if he was under any illusion that Castiel felt the same way about him, but this dinner was an undefined interaction, an un-date. It was determined wholly by its lack of romantic import. Dean left it to continue this way; at least Cas’s questions meant he was interested.

After the food, Castiel insisted on helping Dean to wash-up. Their movements around Dean’s poky little kitchen paralleled their work on the tree, albeit with a far less transcendent product, but Dean took comfort in their brief complicity.  Dean washed and Castiel dried and the candlelit space felt more than a little like bliss.

Dean kept his attention on the plates in order to keep it away from Cas’s hands, from his eyes in the liquid yellow light. They finished the job in a few short minutes that lasted an era. Once Castiel had placed the last pan on the drying rack the two of them were left empty handed, forced to acknowledge that they were occupying an amount of space that was downright intimate.

Dean controlled his breathing, convinced himself that the uneven rise and fall of the other man’s chest was just a trick of the flickering flames, or a result of the strenuous task of drying. Dean reminded himself that he was the one with the crush, and he could not impose his feelings onto Castiel.

This became much harder when Cas took at step closer, stating that their proximity was a choice, not the dictation of the kitchen’s dimensions. Dean could see the premature creases around his eyes, maps of laughter that Dean had not been the cause of, he could feel the heat emanating from a body not his own. He could see Cas’s lips, slightly parted and begging a question, or the answer to one he had already asked. Dean saw all of this in an instant, and had no clue how to respond.

Castiel frowned slightly, and Dean knew inaction had been the wrong choice. But then there was a thumb brushing across his lower lip, a gentle pressure with all sorts of darkened implications which expunged themselves when Cas held his thumb up to the nearest candle. A small blob of ketchup was briefly illuminated before he moved to the sink to wash it off.

“Sorry, but it was bothering me.”

Dean still didn’t know what to do. That was more than a friendly interaction— _anyone else would have just told him to wipe his mouth, right?—_ but it wasn’t quite anything else.

He filled his confusion with hot chocolate, which holds all the answers, or at least enough of them that you can put off answering the rest.

They small-talked in the kitchen, then small-talked some more on the sofa, and finally said goodnight and goodbye at a relatively, but not indecently, late hour.

Dean sat down on the floor and tried to contain his emptiness. He stuck his fingertips in the pools of melted wax that threatened his light sources and built up a barely-hard layer of shielding on his flesh. Then he picked it off and blew out the flames. He sat in the softness of the barely-blue darkness and didn’t know what to feel. It was as if his personality had been peeled away with the wax, and left in little shavings on the floor that would have to be hoovered up tomorrow.

It wasn’t a Great Gatsby moment either— he wasn’t aching for a dream he had built up until it surpassed reality. Dean had touched his dream, refused its possibility, and then served it hot chocolate. He simply didn’t know. He didn’t know what he felt, he didn’t know what would happen, and he didn’t know Castiel.

He didn’t know he was crying until the trails stole heat from his cheeks as they dried. Dean didn’t know why. It was the very ache of not knowing, of not having the power to find out, and the consequent feeling of insignificance.

He was powerless and self-pitying, so he went to bed.


	4. The miracle of caffeine; carol role-play; romantic tropes galore

The next morning a polite tapping on his door coaxed Dean to consciousness. He surfaced with regret, as he had been enjoying a guilt-free fantasy where phrases like ‘true love’ were tossed around with careful recklessness.

The mild-mannered knocking confused him— he had assumed Charlie would have been round first thing to find out if Dean had enough spine to follow her ‘advice’, and in her eagerness she wouldn’t care if anyone else’s Saturday lie-in was disrupted. Knowing her, she would probably invite those she roused to join in the analysis of Dean’s love life.

As Dean made his way through his apartment his feet left small sweat marks where drowsy warmth met laminate floor. He opened the door without any inkling, fuzzy or otherwise, of who could be on the other side.

The first thing to enter the room was the smell of caffeine, which was good. The bearer of such bounty waited to be invited in, with the same politeness of his knock. Dean looked up into eyes that were painful to see in his early-morning-post-cry fug.

He ambled back to the sofa, accepted one of the proffered cups and took a deep glug. His mouth was both pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t scorched for once and deeply resentful that this beverage tasted of something other than resigned bitterness.

He turned, wide-eyed, to Cas.

“What _is_ this?” His social skills had yet to kick in, and his voice grumbled the edges of consonants in a way that made him sound far angrier than he was.

The gift horse whose mouth Dean was looking in froze for a second.

“It’s cinnamon spice.”

After a pause which crumpled Dean’s larynx and almost provoked a rematch with last night’s tears, Castiel continued in a horizontal line of a voice.

“I thought it was seasonal.”

Dean took another sip. It _was_ seasonal, and it was a lovely unexpected gesture that ought to have made him weak at the knees while wearing a rival of the Cheshire Cat’s grin. When the next buzz of caffeine hit him gratefulness started to purr in his chest.

“It is seasonal— I just didn’t expect it from you, Grinchy.”

He tried to put a smile into the words, but Castiel had shifted his gaze away from Dean.

“I’m not a morning person, sorry.”

The fifth sip poked his brain into something resembling functionality, and the sixth gave him a full-on slap.

“Thank you, ‘s what I mean.”

Now Castiel turned around with relief draped over that tatty coat of his. Dean picked at the cardboard sleeve on his cup, dug the corner under his nail and twisted it until it tore.

Then he realised something that made him look up sharply, his bones jutting into uncomfortable positions which he knew must have looked highly surreal from where Cas was standing.

“You can go outside.”

Now a languorous man-eating grin slithered across Castiel’s face— less Cheshire Cat, more alligator who had eaten the leering feline and the rest of Lewis Carroll’s characters for breakfast.

“Yes, you can. And we will, as soon as you’re dressed appropriately.”

Now Dean’s bones really left behind the boundaries of anatomy.

“Where are we going?”

“You’ll see.”

They were a ‘we’. They were going somewhere together. Cas _might_ have been flirting with him (but Dean was less sure of that fact than the other two).

Dean scrambled into his clothes faster than he ever had before. Then he realised that he had automatically gone for yesterday’s outfit, and wriggled into a clean one with the same haste. He had only really known Cas for two consecutive days, and it wouldn’t do for him to wear the same both times. He brushed his teeth, and in a moment of what he hoped was rakish impishness, he grabbed the woolly hat that Sam had made when he was 12.

When he emerged, Castiel was reading the Christmas cards that Dean had barely begun to write. He looked up at Dean and, after sparing a moment to absorb the hat, resumed his study.

“Every one of these is different.”

“Of course they are— they’re for different people.”

“I know, but you’ve included different content for all of them. I just change the names.”

Dean floundered. He didn’t know how to express that Christmas was just his thing— he knew how to do Christmas well, so he did. But Castiel just nodded, ticking something off on the invisible checklist like he had the night before.

“You care a lot about them.”

It wasn’t a question, so Dean didn’t reply. They held eye contact for a moment too long to be casual, and then Castiel led him downstairs.

Dean was getting used to travelling these stairs with Cas at his side— the idea of the polite waiting time seemed wholly ridiculous to him now.

On an untraceable impulse, he grabbed Cas’s sleeve and sprinted across the lobby. They only just skidded to a stop in time for the automatic doors to huffily accept their existence. Dean was panting and full of giddiness that was more due to the fact that Castiel, the untouchable, the unattainable, was taking him somewhere than the 3m run.

He let Castiel reset the pace, and followed him into the love bite of the sleet-heavy wind. They traipsed, King-Wenceslas-and-doting-page style, through the almost empty streets. From the lack of children out a-gallavanting, Dean realised that it must be about 3 hours before any rational person would choose to get up on the weekend (10:00 being the only reasonable time to rouse)— and Cas had got up earlier than that to get coffee.

Dean started his own mental check list of Castiel’s known traits:

  * Gorgeous
  * Not-quite-Grinch
  * Astronomer
  * Meat-eater
  * Caffeinator
  * Early-bird



It wasn’t a lot, and it wasn’t anything particularly deep, but it was a start.

Castiel turned back to Dean, that disastrous grin all over his face. Their passage through the rude wind’s wild lament and the bitter weather had brought them to the park.

Dean opened his mouth to form a question, and was smacked across the jaw with an enemy projectile that splattered across his cheeks. As he adjusted to his frost-framed eyelashes, he came to the conclusion that that dick had thrown a snowball at him— without first establishing the grounds for a duel!

As Dean bemoaned the state of chivalry these days, he gathered his response off the ground. His fingers froze in seconds and he wished that tweenage Sammy had had the foresight to knit him gloves instead. Ah well, revenge was best served cold and all that.

And it was cold, and it was served right in the centre of Cas’s dastardly smile. From then on it was war; there was no time to think, no time to breathe as the world became a spiral of dodging and aiming and ducking and firing. There was no score system, and the fight looked like it would never stop.

Then Castiel was eaten by the ground.

Dean wandered over to investigate with a snowball held behind his back, just in case this was a trap.

Then he reached the point of Cas’s disappearance and laughter brushed away his half-formed battle plans. Cas was slumped in a sandpit that had been hidden under the thick snow, his hair held in a soggy staccato above his sulky face.

Dean reached down to help him up and, _of course_ , ended up with his nose in the squelched sand. Castiel got the last snowball right on his face for that.

They lay in the snow, breathless and mildly shivering. Their skin was struck pink and dotted with random constellations of snowball carcass. A few flakes clung to Cas’s eyebrows and dripped slowly into his eyes. He blinked rapidly to clear his eyesight, but as his eyelashes held more snow there was no net improvement.

Dean reached out and wiped Cas’s face with his sleeve. Castiel lost his perpetual impression of premature middle age (read: he stopped looking sensible for once) as his features screwed themselves up in a paper ball of disgust.

“Your sleeve is wet!”

Dean smirked and rolled onto his back. Then he gave into his impulses and stretched his arms and legs out, brought them back in, repeated the extension. He static-swam through the snow until Castiel did the same.

When they were finished he turned to look at this glorious, unpredictable man and dared himself to hope. Castiel stared right back, and neither of them did anything.

Neither of them did anything that is, until Dean’s teeth started chattering. Then they left their hollow angels in order to find a place with central heating and a good supply of pancakes and golden syrup.


	5. Once there was a little girl called Sophie; a little help from Mariah Carey; the consequences of unresolved sexual tension

The serrated edges of the concrete were not designed to act as handholds; they were grudging and grumpy under Dean’s fingers. Once again, he cursed tiny Sam for not choosing gloves as his textile project. He carefully took one hand off the ledge and worked feeling into it again, then did the same with the other hand.  If he could just keep his balance a little better, then he would have finished a good ten minutes ago.

Instead, Dean was still being roughly cajoled by the wind to the extent that he thought it might be less painful to just rip his nose off. He really should have planned this better. He _really_ should have untangled the Christmas lights before he was hanging off a rooftop.

Dean heard the sound of a window grating against its frame below him, and spared a moment for a quick prayer that the wind hadn’t decided to trap him up here. He ground his molars together— if he and his teeth had to take this much longer then he would only be able to consume liquid foodstuffs.

Despite the wind’s best efforts, a voice stole up to him.

He couldn’t catch the words, but it was reassuring to know that he wasn’t stuck on the roof indefinitely. The person below him tried again.

“Dean, what are you doing?”

Dean didn’t bother to answer, as the answer was pretty obvious and he had other things on his mind, like the fact that his foothold had seemed a lot more stable just a minute ago.

“You should have used a ladder!”

Like Dean would trust one of those again. He was fairly certain it was Cas screaming up at him, but he didn’t feel like dramatically increasing the risk of falling and breaking his neck by leaning back to check.

“Or the service door to the roof!”

Now, Dean _had_ thought of that, but not until he was already suspended several stories up.

“If you’re not going to be helpful then you can shut up!”

As Dean said that, the world obviously felt like it was time for a shake up, because it swung suddenly and needlessly to the left. He needed to focus on anything but the rather final consequences of messing up. He called out again.

“Tell me something about yourself, Cas.”

There was a pause, which Dean hoped meant that Castiel was thinking about what to say and not that he had left him to dangle over the chasm by himself.

Then Castiel’s voice was swept up to him once more.

“Hang on!”

Dean’s laugh strayed towards the edge of hysteria and his ribs grated painfully on the edge of the roof. He made a bitter oath that he would stay alive long enough to get his own back on the pun-making bastard somehow.

Presumably Castiel hurried around his apartment for a little while, and searched in corners that were perfect facsimiles of Dean’s own. When he returned, he told Dean he was going to read him his favourite children’s book.

And that was how Dean ended up hanging off the roof of his building, while the man he had stupidly chosen to fall in love with read him _The Tiger who Came to Tea_.

With Castiel’s words acting as an anchor, however intangible and unlikely to save his life if he did fall, Dean was able to concentrate on separating the wires and clamping them in their assigned places in what felt like no time at all. He knew it was a lot longer than that in reality, because his fingers gradually became redder and he lost any pretention of feeling in his face.

When he was finished, Dean scrambled back into his apartment and the allure of a regulated temperature. He made himself a cup of hot chocolate, and settled in for an evening of solitary contemplation of Cas’s childhood reading preferences.

 

* * *

 

The weeks preceding the end of the Christmas term were a blur of rehearsals and school concerts. Thankfully, they all pulled through as they always did: not perfectly, but well enough that the parents were satisfied with the progress of their darling prodigies.

Once school had broken up, Dean was cast adrift into the slightly empty days before Christmas proper. He floated around his apartment, his cards posted weeks ago, his gifts already wrapped. He bothered Charlie as often as he could (which was pretty often) but even that lost its veneer of vicious pleasure once she became too absorbed in hacking Christmas charity donations from large companies.

For these reasons, Dean was disproportionately excited for the building’s Christmas do. It wasn’t much to look forward to, but the promise of drinking badly mixed Eggnog around the gorgeous Christmas tree obsessed Dean for a whole two days. He concocted a playlist of the greatest (and the worst) Christmas songs of all time, sent out notes sternly ordering every inhabitant to wear a Christmas jumper, and made up the overly alcoholic ‘nog. He even organised a building-wide Secret Santa.

Dean got to the lobby slightly early to set up the music and revelled in the steady growth of the awkwardly milling crowd. He was wearing a different jumper than when he had decorated because the last one still held bad memories. Besides, he had to work through the collection that his mum added to every year. This one was almost subtle, with its dark blue background and silhouette of a sleigh in front of a gleaming moon, but the true genius of it lay in the tiny LEDs that Mary had threaded in to create the gleaming city lights below.

Dean stood in the corner, mildly twinkling and observing the festivities. He was content. Mistletoe was liberally spread throughout the room, but it was a little too early for that to work its magic. Charlie popped over to say hi, but she had a new girl with her who looked like a beautiful cross between a Christmas tree fairy and a poodle, so she was somewhat preoccupied. Dean knew there was one more thing he needed for the party to be a success for him, but he was keenly avoiding that line of thought.

Eartha Kitt was telling the room how much of a good girl she’d been this year when Dean was approached by someone who was clearly not adhering to dress code. In fact, they were as far from the soft cheesiness of a Christmas jumper as could be. Dean could not understand why anyone would have read his note and been prompted to show up in a suit, complete with boring tie.

At least Castiel had the decency to look uncomfortable. Unfortunately, his wholly inappropriate attire did nothing to make him less attractive. Dean felt his ribs expanding again, and prayed that he wasn’t beaming like an idiot. He closed the gap between them, and pointedly looked the sheepish Cas up and down.

“I’m sorry Dean. I just don’t own a Christmas jumper.”

Castiel fiddled awkwardly with his cufflinks, the belated realisation that they were just a tad over the top preventing him from standing still.

Dean thought of the drawer full of Christmas-themed woollen-wear in his apartment, but then decided against being so obvious. Instead he pulled Cas into a corner.

“Take off your jacket and tie.”

Castiel frowned, but complied.

Once they were cast to the side, Dean examined Cas. The pale blue shirt left Castiel shockingly gorgeous, but it was still too formal. Without thinking about it, Dean reached up to Cas’s collar and undid his top button. He faltered when he realised how intimate the action was. But Castiel had crossed the personal space line with him that day in the kitchen, and Dean was just doing him a favour.

As his fingers worked two more buttons free, Dean focused on the humanitarian aspect of his action. He thought of anything but the warm skin that skimmed lightly beneath his fingers, the partially revealed dip under Cas’s collarbone, the ragged edge of Castiel’s breathing that suggested he too was thinking very hard about something else. When Dean had undressed Cas to an acceptable level, he held his ground and looked into those blue eyes, searching for where to go next.

Castiel seemed as uncertain as Dean, their gazes holding each other without revealing much. What it did make clear was that they were both dry-mouthed and heart-shot. Dean tried to find answers on the inoffensively beige ceiling, but instead his eyes hit upon a smug sprig of mistletoe. Cas shifted a little next to him; he had seen it too. It gloated above them, a prescribed course of action that should have been easy enough to follow through. Heck, the music was even at the climax of _All I Want For Christmas Is You._ Dean had the perfect ambience and the perfect guy, but he hesitated.

They both hesitated, and even though their toes were touching and their eyes were questioning and Dean’s hands were still resting on Castiel’s chest, neither of them made a move.

Then the moment shattered, as the jumbled up playlist slammed into a children’s choir rendition of _Frosty the Snowman_. Castiel stepped away, gathered his things and disappeared into the melee of Dean’s vague acquaintances.

Dean ripped down the mistletoe and shoved it in his pocket. It was useless anyway.

When he searched for Charlie, he found her enjoying her date’s company far too much to listen to his angst. He returned to the Eggnog and the playlist he regretted ever making burdened him with Presley’s _Blue Christmas_.

 

* * *

 

The rest of the party was uneventful, as was the rest of the weekend. It seemed very distant from the Christmas cheer of early November, and Dean came to find that he lacked the emotional stamina for a whole two months of merrymaking.

He was slumping up the stairs with two bags of shopping when he next saw Castiel. This time Cas was the one who failed to leave the noncommittal breathing space. In fact, he was being almost antagonistic. The second time Castiel stood on the back of his heel, Dean confronted him.

“What are you doing?”

The question burned with his exasperation at every one of their few interactions. And Dean didn’t know the answer to it; part of him hoped Cas would shed some light on their twisting not-flirting-but-essentially-flirting interactions.

Castiel didn’t respond well to Dean’s tone however, and he closed the distance between them in one step.

“I’m just trying to get home. Does that bother you?”

The words held a threat on their edges and Dean instinctively retaliated, even as they sliced his lungs with salt.

“I was doing just fine, until you came along. Standing on my heels, throwing snowballs, just generally standing far too close.”

This forced Dean to realise how close they were once again, and he swallowed the ending of his rant. Castiel looked ready to murder someone, and Dean was the only target around.

“You know what, _Dean_ —”

Dean flinched at the emptiness his name held, noticed all of a sudden how much warmth Cas normally graced it with.

“I think we both know which one of us constantly brings us together.”

“Oh yeah, because I turned up at your apartment at a godforsaken hour just to play snowballs!”

Dean’s eyes were stinging, because that had been sweet and the excellent memory now turned to dust on his tongue. They were both saying stupid things, because all they had to fight about was feelings. Neither of them had done anything to upset the other, in the same way that neither of them had moved at the party. That thought reminded Dean of an actual grievance he had to throw out there.

“And I’m not the one who avoided you all throughout the party after you helped me become casual enough to blend in!”

Castiel’s lips parted, but he had nothing else to say. He just shoved Dean away from him and stormed up the stairs.

Dean closed his eyes and counted to twenty in his head, then counted for a further thirty until the bursts of purple and blue receded from his eyelids. He breathed in slowly; he wasn’t going to cry somewhere anyone could walk past.

At this point, he was past even the comfort of Charlie and ice cream. He walked into his apartment and screamed. He screamed until the roughness of his throat reminded him that Castiel was right below him. Dean untethered his lungs from his voice box, allowed the air to tear through his throat while maintaining the quiet.

He shuddered and cried, then picked himself off the floor and put away his groceries.


	6. Plants vs. stories; drunken jubilations; star-crossed

It was the 22nd December and still too far from Christmas for Dean to regain his excitement. He had eventually unburdened himself to Charlie, but she was getting very loved up with Glinda right now and so not the greatest balm for a broken heart.

Dean supposed that was what he had now. He supposed that he had been in love, and had finally got around to thinking it wasn’t too farfetched for Castiel to love him back, or at least, for him to want to find out if he could, one day.

The snow on the streets was still refreshing itself, maintaining a regulated numbness that wasn’t quite enough for normal life to stop.

Because the world didn’t end when Dean did, he found himself packing to visit his family. The remainder of his Christmas jumpers were already in the case, so he just had to gather up his trousers. As he folded his favourite pair of jeans, his hands were sent off course by an object in the pocket. Dean tugged it out in frustration.

A bedraggled sprig of mistletoe curled itself into his palm, its leaves withered and sad-looking. Dean looked at it for a moment, and then hurled it out of the window. Acidic tears seeped along the base of his eyes, and he grimly determined that he would finish packing in the next two minutes, so help him God.

A veneer of composure was once again plastered over his face by the time there was a knock on his door. It was polite and incessant and Dean debated not answering it.

However, it gnawed like a gnat on his patience until he had no choice but to huff his way across his apartment to let them in.

Dean should have been surprised when he saw Castiel on his doorstep but he had seen him in his own reflection that morning and in the snow spattered windowpanes, so he was used to him turning up unexpectedly. Dean did his best to fill the doorframe with his limbs; he wasn’t going to let Cas in so readily this time.

Castiel stood in front of him with the knowledge that Dean was not going to start this conversation held in the tension between his eyebrows, clutched in the slight pursing of his lips. He took a moment to compose himself, and then held out his hand.

“This was on the pavement when I arrived and I’m so sorry Dean.”

Castiel frowned at the floor, but Dean had yet to identify what Cas clutched.

“I shouldn’t have stood on your heels, or ignored you, or woken you up so early.”

Dean knew the apology wasn’t being proffered for those things, in the same way that he hadn’t shouted at Cas for those reasons either. Dean finally decoded the melancholy dark green curl that was balanced in Castiel’s open palm.

It had less leaves than when Dean had chosen to throw it, and it had evidently been walked over by several people for whom it held no significance before Cas had picked it up. The mistletoe sat between them, an evergreen plea to Pontius Pilate after his hands had already been washed.

“May I come in?

“No.”

Dean was not ready for this right now. Besides, even if he had been in the mood for stirring up his relationship troubles, it was his last night in town and he had agreed to meet someone.

“I’m going out in a minute.”

Dean closed Castiel’s fingers around the slip of plant and carefully closed the door.

He was now certain that his heart was broken with the same conviction that he knew he was still in love.

 

* * *

 

Something in Dean jumpstarted before he left to meet Benny. He remained convivial, and was downright jovial as they knocked back beers in a sleazy bar downtown.

They got drunk together and reminisced about the year behind them. Dean splattered his heart across the sticky bar top, and Benny scraped it up on the base of an ashtray and returned it. Dean was grateful and drunk, and still drinking.

After they had paid the tab, Benny turned to Dean.

“I think it’s about time that I met this boy a’ yours.”

Dean was thankful enough and inebriated enough that he agreed.  So they trooped up the stairs and stood on the spot where Dean’s stomach had taken a leap of faith.

Dean didn’t knock politely, so Castiel’s door opened very quickly, considering the late hour. Dean grinned, and burst into song.

He only got through the first few bars of _Away in a Manger_ before Cas pulled him through the doorway.

“Dean, there are people trying to sleep.”

The terse tone cowed Dean sufficiently and he tracked into a memory of his Mum chastising him for singing as they walked home from some forgotten social event, or shushing him because little Sammy was sleeping in the next room.

Dean picked up _Silent Night_ — they were inside now so they were safe. Still Castiel silenced him, so Dean stopped his performance (if somewhat reluctantly). Once his mouth stopped moving, he remembered how pretty Cas was, and how little he had seen him recently.

Dean reached out clumsy hands to hold Castiel’s face. His jaw was rough but his lips looked soft. Dean should probably kiss them, because that was what he had always wanted to do. Castiel’s pupils dilated at the touch, and his breath blew across Dean’s fingers a little more rapidly. Dean should definitely kiss him then.

Cas laid his hands over Dean’s and gently removed them from his face. His eyebrows curled together, and his tongue traced his lips before he spoke.

“Don’t.”

Dean would have been lost here if it weren’t for Castiel’s hands on his. They held him in surety rather than letting him drunkenly spiral into the complications of why two people who wanted to kiss shouldn’t kiss. Cas’s hands were large and warm as they led him across to the window.

“Here.”

Castiel replaced his hands with a cold metal object that he guided to Dean’s eye.

He steadied the telescope to draw Dean into the night sky’s intricacies. Dean gathered his breath before it escaped his lips, caught in the sudden clarity.

Dean was looking through Cas’s eyes, joining the heavenly dots with the knowledge that Castiel’s lifetime of study imparted to him. Dean was a magpie— he gathered these celestial lights in his irises purely because he enjoyed them— but Cas polished every star and hung them with a scientific precision that lent each one new illumination. They were as silent as the sun itself, but still Castiel held Dean, prevented him drifting off into the emptiness of space or falling to the magnified roof tiles. They traced a map around the cosmos that they would never follow, but that Dean didn’t want to. He was happy here.

Once Castiel had pointed out the best known constellations and explained how lucky it was that the snow clouds had left the sky bereaved, he led Dean to the door.

In the hallway, Dean saw Benny waiting for him. He felt a little guilty until Benny nodded and winked.

“That’s a goodun.”

Benny tilted his hat and left Dean in the carpeted hush.

Dean knew Castiel was a good one and that things had changed between them again. He knew he was happy when he fell into bed, and happy through the headache of the next morning. What he did not know was that while he and Benny held their brief counsel on the landing, Castiel had pressed his back against the door and allowed himself a few moments of haphazard grinning. He had even whistled a little.


	7. Issues with pathetic fallacy; contrasting definitions of luck; the watchful eyes of Jim, Betsy and Fido

When Dean eventually woke up the next morning his skull felt like the discarded receptacle of 1,000,000 V of electricity. Next time he played Igor to Benny’s Frankenstein he would have to set very clear limits. Even the natural world had bent to the whim of his hangover— there was a storm raging against the windowpanes that matched the pulse in his temples beat for godforsaken beat.

Once he could bear to contemplate the idea of light, Dean dragged his abused body to the window to survey the damage. He stumbled back almost immediately; his eyes had conjured up an unstable carnival that blurred the edges of reality into a lurid mass of light and colour. He needed coffee, and he was in the mood to cater to that.

After two and a half cups, he felt certain that there would be no more visions and returned to the window. Once again Dean saw the bright lights and the distorted flashing, but he was now in a mental state that could successfully translate those semiotics. The Christmas lights which he had so painstakingly attached to the roof were dangling down the side of building, with about as much exuberance as Eeyore’s tail.

 

* * *

 

At least Castiel had told him about the fire escape, Dean thought as he emerged into the wrath of the elements. The storm was lulling a little, and the tang of the wind on Dean’s face suggested slumbering snow drifts and tiny villages of twinkling lights that would not look out of place on a biscuit tin. In light of these fortifying images, Dean walked to the edge of the roof without any hesitation. He had even remembered to bring a long implement (broom) to hook the end of the lights with, and had propped the door of the fire escape open with a spare shoe. It was Mission Impossible for Dummies— he would be finished before any passerby could say ‘lickety-split’.

As Dean teased up the stray lights, he carefully ensured to balance his body weight to avoid accidental overtoppling. He was not in the mood to become a statistic today.

Except, there’s that thing people say about the best laid plans…

Maybe it was the sheer concentration of the word ‘fall’ in Dean’s thoughts (albeit preceded by ‘not going to’ each time), or the pernicious mind of the errant Goddess of the Lovesick and Hungover, or simply the storm refusing to conform to Dean’s rigorous planning. But whoever or whatever decides these things decided that it was not going to go Dean’s way.

It is very difficult to pinpoint what exactly went wrong, but the reawakened storm— the slumbering villages now subdued through questionably violent methods— and Dean’s failure to acknowledge to pre-Christmas weight he had already put on may have had something to do with it.

Whatever the reason, as Dean lay over the edge of the roof and grappled with the flashing bulbs of persistent seasonal cheer, he somehow stopped being on the edge of the roof.

He wasn’t truly aware of this fact until he became a sharp snap.

He more than heard it— it oscillated through his skeleton and stabbed him between the eyes with a haze of mottled green and purpled brown. The shattering culminated with a deep nausea that drew him to the ground, which he vaguely recognised as a lot nearer than it ought to have been, and really _shouldn’t things stay where they were instead of flying up to meet people just trying to let Christmas be Christmassy_. His martyrdom became very apparent to him as he felt the snow seeping through his layers of jumpers to join the sweat on his back— _why sweat when it’s just so cold—_ and more snow teasing his face, getting in his eyes when he couldn’t draw up the energy to bat it away. People blurred themselves towards him, shifting closer in his periphery and making muted noises that weren’t very reassuring at all and _could they please just speak up a little really_.

That was more or less when Dean passed out, although at some point his pained monologue alighted on the fact that Castiel’s eyes were bluer than the sky that was currently hidden from him by those ugly grey clouds and bluer, even, than the faded phosphorescence of the single light bulb that his hand was unable to release.

 

* * *

 

If one more person told Dean how lucky he was he would throw them off a five-storey building and see how lucky they felt when they broke _their_ ankle.

The round white clock on the white wall opposite his cheap white bed (white sheets, metal frame) was telling him that it was 7:08, but that wasn’t specific enough for Dean to apply a time frame to the blur of anaesthetic and napping and surgery that was his life now. He debated calling the nurse to ask what day it was, but decided that it would be too much like wasting the time of the already-stretched staff. That was when it him that he had fallen into a place in the worst kind of statistics— the Christmas boom of preventable injuries.

Dean groaned at the futility of it all. He figured it must still be the 23rd, but the doctor had told him he would need to stay in for a minimum of two days. The whitewashed room offered him nothing in the form of entertainment, the only decoration being a supposedly cheering image of two children with a dog and toy boat that Dean found more than a little unsettling. Their smiles didn’t quite reach their eyes, the colours were too glossy, and the dog looked at least as sentient as the children. He shuddered and hummed Metallica under his breath. It was too depressing for him to sing Christmas songs at this point.

His self-pitying reverie was broken by a scuffle a few beds over, near the door. Someone was trying to enter the room, even though whatever side of noon it was, 7:09 was not within visiting hours. Dean wondered what kind of an asshole would trouble the staff at this time of year, but he wasn’t invested enough to give the matter his full attention— besides, the dividing curtains made it impossible to properly see anything that wasn’t within his allotted rectangle. He hummed _Rock ‘n’ Roll Damnation_ , debating whether the people in the beds around him were well enough to mind if he just belted it out.

The scuffle seemed to have resolved itself into harsh murmurings that were low enough to be indecipherable, but not hushed enough that Dean didn’t strain to hear anyway. Eventually, the asshole seemed to be granted leave to enter the room— if just to ensure he would leave at some point.

Dean placed a silent bet on which patient was pitiful enough to belong to this asshat. He felt that the best odds were with the girl three beds down from him, whose skin was still a little grey from shock. The visitor’s footsteps trooped down Dean’s row, but continued long enough to pass the girl. Dean rapidly realigned his prediction, opting instead for the old man who occasionally whimpered in his sleep in the bed next to him.

The even crunches made by snow-sodden plastic on polished linoleum paused just before the walker would have come into Dean’s view. Probably the old man then— Dean softened towards the asshole as they took a moment to prepare themselves before seeing their poor old pops.

When the rubbery squeak restarted, it stopped short of the next space divider. Dean kept his eyes shut (he had closed them in order to escape the unerring gaze of Jim, Betsy and Fido on the wall opposite) to allow them a moment of composure.

The silence lasted long enough that he had slightly slipped into unconsciousness before the visitor moved again— _that’s pain meds for you_. Because of this, Dean wasn’t alert enough to accurately process the direction the footsteps were travelling, only noticing the unpleasant way that the sharp friction rasp bounced off the emotionless walls.

Because of that, he wasn’t prepared when warm fingertips barely grazed the back of his palm. Dean sat up suddenly, only slightly hindered by the various tubes attached to him, and stared at the asshole.

“I hope that you don’t think I’m presuming— I mean, I saw you fall and called the ambulance but they wouldn’t let me come with you… I just wanted to ascertain whether you were alright.”

Dean took in the jerk— the man who was willing to disturb hospital staff at the busiest time of year, to squeak down the aisle of pained people trying to sleep just to visit him. A smile that traced its edges with self-criticism perched on Castiel’s face, and Dean absorbed the fact that this was _his_ asshole. Tears starred the edges of his eyes (the painkillers were really very strong) and he felt his spirits lift a little.

He winced slightly as he resettled himself, and then asked the important question.

“Is it morning or evening?”

“It’s the evening.”

“Good, I don’t have to wait too long before I can go back to sleep then.”

There was an awkward silence, during which Dean noticed the rude implications of his statement, worried over how to correct it, then realised it had been too long to do anything. Castiel tapped his fingers against the bed frame, the one sign of emotion he allowed Dean to see— or maybe just the only one that Dean could pick up on in his current state.

He forced his tongue to move with more deliberation and, he hoped, more tenderness.

“Thanks for coming Cas, seriously. Even if you were a bit of a jerk in order to get in here.”

Dean cursed his apparent need to insult the man to whom he was honestly very grateful. Luckily, Castiel laughed, and even through the drugs Dean could feel his chest stretching sideways in an attempt to match the resonant frequency of the rolling chuckle.

“I should probably go and let everyone sleep, yes.”

Dean looked into the blue eyes above him, a tease of sky that had snuck into the sterile white room. He reached out and held Castiel’s hand in his own, all curled up knuckles and snow-parched skin. He let the warmth where their palms pressed together guide him into the sleep that had been clumsily sucking him down.

 

* * *

 

Dean slept unsurprisingly well under the gaze of that creepy picture, and only woke up when slices of slanted yellow light singed his eyelids ochre. Once he had dragged himself out of slumber, he recognised the familiar figure sat on a chair by his bed.

With her head bent down and her eyebrows drawn together as she counted the number of stitches on the knitting needle in her hand, Mary Winchester was oblivious to her son’s slide into consciousness. Her fine hair fell from a loose bun and the sun caught the strands in its snowlit glare, and Dean felt a deep sense of rightness. It may be Christmas Eve, and he may be stuck in a hospital, but his mother carried home with her.

“Hi Mum.”

He smiled when his voice startled her out of her concentration, and her features softened into concern. But only for the half-second it took her to ascertain that Dean was moreorless okay— then her features angled into annoyance.

“But _why_ did you decide to fall off a building just a couple of days before Christmas? Who’s going to finish off the turkey now?”

Dean felt the way her expression would easily lie on his own features, and wished he had visited home more over the past year.

“Well, Sammy’s a growing boy he could do with some extra flesh on him— get him off that rabbit food.”

Mary laughed and dropped one bone of contention to pick over another.

“More importantly, why haven’t you told me about the young man who was in here earlier?”

Her tone was sharp, but the lightness she held in her eyes prompted Dean to divulge his crush and his hopes that it could be finally be going somewhere. And, as mothers sometimes do, she listened in a way that prompted him to fill it with more and more words; the comforting deep blue quiet that doesn’t place judgement but doesn’t encourage excessive hyperbole either. And Dean, as sons often fail to do, filled that space with words soaked in greens and yellows and sparks of orange, overlaid with the lilac blooms of unarticulated promises that weren’t meant for Mary but were spread on a canvas primed with the blue of an opening sky. He gave these words away without speaking them, passing them on while truly waiting for them to be interpreted by another.

When he had finished, Mary squeezed his hand and a sad little smile tucked itself into the corners of her lips.

“He’s waiting outside just now— he thought we might like some time alone.”

Dean tried not to seem too impatient for Castiel’s entrance, because he did appreciate his mother’s presence and her familiarity. But she was like a well-remembered picture book, while Castiel was a half-discerned piece of verse, in nouns and well formed verbs that Dean had yet to familiarise with the shape of his mouth and the grasp of his tongue. The small sad smile spread to the filigree of crow’s feet around Mary’s eyes and she left to invite Cas in.

Dean waited, picking up each squeaked step that marked Cas’s progress down the ward. He entered Dean’s allotted space behind a veil of green that struck out against the bland whiteness that they were enclosed in.

Castiel smiled and lowered the miniature Christmas tree onto the small table beside the bed.

He gestured to it in attempt to self-deprecate.

“I was going to bring flowers, but I thought that this was more seasonal.”

Dean found that the awkwardness of the night before had passed from him, and didn’t try to stop the grin eating away at any pretence of cool that the fact he was wearing a hospital gown had left him with.

Cas’s mouth mirrored the plummeting happiness as he pulled something shiny and shedding out of his pocket.

“A Christmas tree always needs decorations right?”

Castiel said this as he revealed to Dean a cardboard star that was busily casting off its covering of silver and blue sparkles. It was a little bedraggled from its time in Cas’s pocket but it was everything that Dean could have asked for.

“And presents too.”

With this, Castiel pulled a neatly wrapped box from his pocket— shiny red paper and golden ribbon curled and crisply knotted— and tucked it at the base of the fake foliage. Dean caught Cas’s hand before it could return to his pocket, regained the reassurance of the night before without the limits of unconsciousness.

By the time Cas had to leave, Dean’s throat was sore from the talking and the laughing. His mouth was ripe with plans and murmurs and guffaws that he had yet to share, yet he felt no impatience with this. He had the sense that there was time, and that he would use this time to its full potential, whenever it came along.


	8. Season's meetings; trolls; Christmas, finally

Dean couldn’t wait to leave that terrible creepy painting behind him and this, even more than the prospect of Christmas dinner with all the trimmings at home, made his hobbling along the hospital corridors much faster.

Amongst all the sprouts and crackers and, admittedly, copious amounts of earthy whisky that constituted the Winchester’s annual celebrations, Dean felt oddly adrift. He knew it wasn’t fair of him to miss Castiel when he was surrounded by so many people he loved. But even as he watched his family dissolve into hysterics when Bobby opened Dean’s gift to him (a new pastel pink cap with ‘Idjits’ blazoned across the front in hot pink sequins), there was a point in his chest that remained resolutely still as the rest of his muscles contracted with humour.

When it was time to say goodbye and Dean made the dutiful rounds of hugs, he felt the crystallisation of anticipation spearing his throat. He had to move painfully slowly because of the cast, but he wasn’t even a little put out by the fact that he had missed two days of family time. For once, he had something to return to. Because of this, he couldn’t help the threat of irritation that passed over his features when Mary beckoned him further into the house.

Dean didn’t really understand what was happening when she handed him an additional Christmas jumper to the one that had been his gift that year (delightfully hideous swirls of red and green that somehow convoluted into a complete tree if viewed from far enough away). Mary welcomed his confusion with a smile that had dropped some of its earlier sadness.

“I always make one for Jess and I thought that maybe Castiel would like one too this year.”

When Dean didn’t reply, Mary continued.

 “Maybe at least as a thank you for making sure you got to hospital.”

Dean shook away the tears that were snug in the corners of his eyes, and swallowed his mum in a tight hug.

When he eventually managed to leave, after a seemingly endless chorus of goodbyes and promises to meet up again soon, Dean clutched the soft blue wool in his hands and wondered how his mother had understood Cas so well. The jumper was a deep blue, dotted with small stars that transitioned into snowflakes further down. It was subtle, but interesting enough that Dean wanted to spend hours figuring out the intricacies of the pattern. Above anything else, he was amazed at how quickly Mary had been able to produce it.

 

* * *

 

The oxidised chrome of the elevator was unfamiliar to Dean and he decided that he much preferred the stairs, with all their potential for awkwardness, to the wallpaper dry air and soulless jingles that he now had no option but to endure. As he made his way carefully down the corridor, his plan to pop in to see Charlie was waylaid by the sight of someone sat outside his door.

Once Dean was close enough to identify that someone as Castiel he promptly decided that Charlie could definitely wait until later, or tomorrow even.

Cas looked up at disturbance made by Dean hauling himself and his family’s gifts as elegantly as he could manage across the short distance.

“Dean!”

The warmth in his voice matched the sweat that was gathering in Dean’s palms.

“Dean, I’m sorry, I know it’s late but…”

Castiel trailed off as he relieved Dean of his various burdens, but picked up his thread again when they reached the door.

“It’s just, as you know, you had me for Secret Santa and—”

Dean had forgotten all about that whim of his. Thank goodness he bought all of his presents early, and had in fact sorted Castiel’s Secret Santa the day after he had drawn his name at the party.

“And Charlie noticed and took me into your flat to get it.”

If Dean had been on a TV show that would have been a moment when he looked directly into the camera— he needed to find a new hiding place that Charlie didn’t know about, or give his spare key to someone else. As soon as that thought had entered his mind, however, it was replaced with the urgent need to find out if Cas had liked his gift.

“Dean, I don’t know what to say. It was perfect.”

Castiel pulled aside the flap of his trench coat to reveal the midnight blue tie with the constellations scattered across it in fine silver thread.

Dean knew it was perfect, Christmas was his thing. Except…

Castiel had tied the knot too tight, and the wider end was doing its best to twist back to front. Dean let go of his crutches so that he could adjust the shoddy tiemanship.

When everything was restored to perfection, Dean looked up into the blue eyes that were so very close to him now. He saw Cas’s eyelids fluttering lower, noted the slight forwards inclination of his head, realised with photographic clarity that this was going to be their first kiss. Dean lowered his hands from Castiel’s chest, clutched at the flutters of his breath, and took a step backwards.

He grabbed his crutches and moved as quickly as he could to the elevator.

 

* * *

 

Standing alone on the roof under the dark expanse of sky, Dean felt extraordinarily, spectacularly momentous. He felt miniscule but simultaneously magnified, greater than the sum of his parts.

The cold air cut his lungs with stardust, and he let it burn through him as he waited (hoped) for Castiel to follow him. He was about to seek shelter from the light snowfall when a patch of light snuck over to him from the door to the stairs.

He turned and waited a little longer for Cas to reach him. Dean would have liked to run towards him, to jump into his arms, but plaster of Paris is heavier than it looks. It was probably better that he didn’t do that anyway.

Castiel stopped a civil distance away from him, forcing Dean to be the one to push their proximity beyond that of casual friendship. Cas didn’t appear hurt, just reserved, as Dean restored the taut stop motion that he had broken off downstairs.

First from his pocket Dean pulled out a metal box, no longer enclosed in shiny red paper and gold ribbon. He turned the key on its base to liberate the pale twinkling notes that it held in its inner perforations.

“Rutter, really?”

Castiel smirked at the music box’s rendition of the _Shepherd’s Pipe Carol_.

“It was what you were whistling, when…”

Cas looked up, and Dean met his gaze. Starlocked, snowlocked, overplayed-Christmas-carol-locked. Dean knew that he had chosen to practice Rutter first (one of the reasons for the large amount of complaining from the senior choir), and so he had been whistling it as he collected his mail on a sleety day in November.

Next he removed from his pocket the remnants of a sad sprig of mistletoe— not the same one he had thrown off a building, Cas still had that, but one that he had intentionally dishevelled to match— and held it above their heads so the crumbling leaves joined the snowflakes gracing both their cheeks.

Dean offered the only explanation he could for leaving Castiel downstairs.

“Now it’s perfect.”

Then Dean crossed the bridge they had been dancing around for months.

And, while there was no troll to prevent them crossing, there was a broken ankle that made the passage far less smooth than it could have been. But the slightly misaimed meeting of lips made the kiss all the sweeter, and gave them a platform to align themselves over the course of later kisses. Light as the snow and hungry as the burning stars above them, their mouths paired themselves and Dean did his best to clutch at the poetry of it all.

His feet were slightly soggy and when he let the mistletoe drift into the wind, it returned to slap him in the face. Once the greenery was removed and he found Castiel’s lips again, Dean was forced to concede that the man he had fallen for was far less of a Humbug than first thought. They made their own Christmas carol from the shared heat of their bodies— a counterpart to the snow’s inevitable smush into sludge.

Afterwards, Castiel suggested that they watch a film, and Dean made him swear that it wouldn’t be a Christmas one— he had had more than his share of miracles for at least another year.


End file.
